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JERUSALEM – Palestinian terrorist groups agreed yesterday to a conditional period of “calm” until the end of the year – but they reserved the right to end it at any time.

The agreement by 13 groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, was the result of two days of intense negotiating by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to formally establish the fragile cease-fire that began in January.

Mubarak called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to report the agreement, and Sharon called it “a positive first step.”

But Sharon stressed that to reach the next steps along the U.S.-brokered “road map” to Mideast peace “the armed organizations must be completely dismantled.”

The terrorist groups, on the other hand, emphasized that the lull in attacks would end if all 8,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails aren’t released by year’s end.

“What has been agreed upon is that the period of calm will have an upper time limit, which is the end of the year,” said Mohammed Nazzal, a Hamas leader. “This is in return for an Israeli commitment to stop aggression against Palestinian people and to release all prisoners.”

Nazzal stressed that Hamas felt free to end the “calm” at any time.

Officials in Cairo said Hamas had insisted on a timetable of Israeli concessions as part of the agreement but compromised on vaguer wording.

At the last minute, the groups won agreement that the final statement would be limited to “the year 2005.”

Israeli officials underlined that they had no deal with terrorists but with Abbas, reached at a summit in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt on Feb. 8.

At that meeting, Israel agreed to halt military action against Palestinians as long as the violence against Israelis ends.

Meanwhile, Israeli security revealed yesterday that five Palestinians were indicted on charges of trying to set up an al Qaeda cell in Jerusalem.

The leader of the group, Murad Elyen, planned to smear poison on doors of the Israeli parliament building that would be fatal to anyone touching it, officials said.

In an unrelated development, Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was indicted for speaking to foreign reporters and trying to visit the West Bank.

Vanunu was freed from an Israeli prison in April after completing an 18-year sentence for revealing secrets of Israel’s atomic program.

But he was barred from contacting foreigners or trying to leave Israel in the following year.

Israeli authorities have said they fear Vanunu may share more secrets.